NO single foreign policy development in the past 50 years has given Indians as great a shock as US president Bill Clintons decision to issue a joint statement with the Chinese president Jiang Zemin from Beijing devoted solely to condemning the Indian and Pakistani nuclear testsand offering China a partnership role in preventing "an accelerating nuclear arms and missile race in South Asia". This was heaping insult upon injury, for had China not transferred the trigger device and design of a nuclear bomb, ring magnets for gas centrifuges, at least 30 M-11 missiles and associated bomb and missile technology to Pakistan with a complete disregard for its own international obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a situation might never have arisen in which it felt obliged to unveil and test its nuclear arsenal. Inviting China to solve a problem, when it was itself a part of the problem, was a travesty of justice. Not surprisingly, India condemned the joint statement in language that came close to being undiplomatic. Relations with the US sank to the lowest level they had ever reached.